


January Thaw

by sasspan



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: HeartGold & SoulSilver | Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver Versions
Genre: M/M, Post-Mt. Silver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21954070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasspan/pseuds/sasspan
Summary: Green woke up gradually, not to the sound of his usual alarm, but to the awareness of the strange silence of his bedroom.
Relationships: Ookido Green | Blue Oak & Red, Ookido Green | Blue Oak/Red
Comments: 5
Kudos: 198
Collections: 2019 Pokémon Holiday Exchange





	January Thaw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Genesee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Genesee/gifts).



> Hello Genesee! I hope the holiday season is going well for you :) Thanks for the great secret stantler prompt! It was really fun to write Red/Green during the wintertime!
> 
> I love interpretations of them as adults during GSC/HGSS, but I kind of wanted to explore what it would be like if they were teenagers instead, how the post-Mt. Silver fallout would be handled. I hope you like it, and happy holidays!

Green woke up gradually, not to the sound of his usual alarm, but to the awareness of the strange silence of his bedroom. 

He sat up as soon as it registered. Eevee, curled at his feet, grumbled a complaint. He looked across the room, where the second bed was pressed against the window, starkly empty. The sheets were made. Beyond it, through the windowpane—he saw, with growing dread, the aimless drift of tiny white snowflakes. 

Green half fell, half clambered out of bed. His head was blurry with sleep and panic as he lurched out of the bedroom, down the hallway, into the kitchen…

Red was standing by the big window that overlooked the front yard. He had one hand pressed to the glass, and the other at his shoulder, where Pikachu was perched. 

The sound of Green coming in made him turn from the window. His hand dropped from the glass, leaving a perfect, misty palm print. 

And his eyes—they were—unbearable. Crowded with wonder and longing and melancholy and many other things. Red blinked, slowly. 

“It’s snowing,” he murmured. 

Green stared, his heart caught somewhere in his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

* * *

Red had returned home with the first spring thaw of the previous year, two months after that kid from Johto had left for Mount Silver. He’d showed up on Green’s doorstep in Viridian one day, just like that. 

It caused something of a commotion when it happened—Green had a vague memory of actual news trucks parked in front of the gym—but Red, Red didn’t say much about what happened, or how. Just asked if he could stay for a bit. Then a bit longer. And then a bit more after that. Daisy dropped by to visit, and Leaf, and Red’s mom, and even Gramps himself, and still Red stayed in Viridian. 

He’d slept in the living room sofa the first few nights, then an old futon for a while. Finally, after a near month of waking up to Red splayed out in front of the TV, Green had caved and bought another bed. No other place to put it but his own room—being a teenage gym leader, despite the glamour, only paid enough for a one-bedroom. 

It was weird, at first. Going to sleep every night to the sound of Red’s quiet, steady breathing. Waking up every morning to the sight of his awful bedhead. Coming back from the gym every evening to Red training his pokémon in the backyard, or playing with Pikachu in the living room, or reading one of his books at the kitchen counter…  


It was like when they were little and used to sleep over at each other’s houses all the time, sometimes not going back to their own homes for days or weeks at a time. It was like they were ten years old again. Except it also wasn’t like that at all. 

* * *

Snow had come late this year. Usually, even this far south, Pallet and Viridian would be blanketed in white by now, but this year it was past winter solstice before the first flurries began drifting from the gray clouds overhead. 

This meant that Green ended up spending half of his morning trying to find his snow shovel, and the other half clearing a path from his house to the main road. Red was no help; he just wandered around staring up at the sky, holding his hand out so flakes could settle in his palm, and Pikachu and Eevee were more interested in chasing each other through the snow than anything. 

When they finally made it to the gym, it was dark and quiet. Green had messaged his trainers to take the day off— no point in making them slog through this weather, too—but he’d wanted to shutter the windows properly, set the thermostat, get the gym pokémon well settled in the new cold. 

After that was finished, they all walked back home, a mercifully shorter trip. Usually they’d eat out for lunch at some place in town, but today there were things still left over in the fridge from yesterday. Half a dish of baked pasta that Daisy had brought over, some sliced bread, and what remained of a box of chocolates from Kalos, a holiday present from one of Green’s trainers. 

They ate in silence. Granted, Red was not the chatty type, but Green usually made up for it. Talked about the day’s challengers, complained about Lance’s micromanaging, whatever. Today, though—he’d been feeling like he was walking along the edge of a precipice, nervy with trepidation.

“Going for a walk,” Red announced abruptly when they’d finished lunch. 

Beneath the table, Green’s hand clutched vaguely at his pant’s leg. 

Pikachu gave Eevee a quick nose-kiss before skittering up onto Red’s shoulder. Together, they headed for the door. 

“Not taking your other pokémon?” Green asked as nonchalantly as he could. 

“No. I’ll be back soon.”

The door clicked shut behind him. A small noise, but it settled like iron in Green’s stomach. 

* * *

Green didn’t get much work done that afternoon. He sat in front of his PC, scrolling unseeingly through messages from Lance, Leaf, Gramps, his gym trainers. He kept an ear on the door and an eye on Eevee, napping on the sofa. If something—happened, or changed, she would know, right? Pokémon always knew when this kind of thing happened. 

She had cried for days when Red and Pikachu had left, before. Little high-pitched animal whines that tore at his heart, hour after hour. It was the one thing he thought he might not ever forgive Red for. 

But tonight—she slept contentedly among the pillows, furry brown side rising and falling in relaxed rhythm. So it was fine, he thought. It was fine.

And then again, as the evening slipped away, and the early winter sun disappeared behind the hills. It was fine. 

The door crackled open at a quarter to ten. Red edged in, trailed by Pikachu. His dark hair was freckled with snow, and his hands and nose very flushed. His lips were tilted into an almost imperceptible smile. 

Green was suddenly, inexplicably angry. 

Eevee rose from the sofa and stretched luxuriously, then leapt to the floor to greet Pikachu.

“You were gone a while,” Green said. 

Red just looked at him.

“I ate dinner already,” Green said. An obvious lie. The words came out loud, louder than he had meant them. The pokémons’ ears quirked towards him. 

Red’s expression did not change.

“I’m going to bed,” Green said. 

He went to the bedroom, readied for bed haphazardly, lay down with his back turned to the door. In a little while he heard the door opening, felt Eevee jumping onto the bed and nestling close. 

“Green,” said Red softly. 

It really was like being ten years old again. Green closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Listened to Red get ready for bed. Counted his own breaths until real sleep came and took him anyway. 

* * *

He dreamt that he was on Mount Silver, or what he imagined Mount Silver to be, anyway—barrenly stony, stretches of shale and snow interrupted only by ice-crusted shrubs. 

He was climbing up towards the distant peak. Scrabbling over the rough-edged rock on all fours. His hands cracked and dry with the cold, his throat even more so. He was parched. 

There was a noise, coming from—somewhere. A round, tinkling sound, echoed by a dull roar. 

When he crested the top of a ridge, he saw what it was. A deep furrow in the mountain side, lined with shrubs, had become a spring stream. Melting frost dripped off the plants and down into the flow of water as it rushed through the stone. Further down, Green could see the stream widening into an emerald river, pounding down, down, down…

Green woke up, a deep and unfathomable sadness blooming in his chest. He rolled over, forgetting himself. 

Across the room, Red was awake, and staring at him. 

Green’s previous irritation had drained away, leaving him tired and pensive. He stared back at Red steadily. 

Finally, he said, “You can go now, if you want.” 

Red did not blink. “Go where?”

“Back to Mount Silver.”

It was quiet for a moment. It was dim, in the room, the only light leaking in from the hall. Green could see the familiar contours of Red’s face, hear the familiar cadence of Red’s breathing. 

Red said, “Do you want me to go?”

“ _You_ want to go,” said Green. The words came out less eloquent than he would have liked. “Today. With the, the snow. I saw you.” 

Across the room, Red’s face creased as though confused. 

Green frowned. The next part was almost— _embarrassing_ —to say aloud, but some things were easier to say in the dark. “Thought when you went for a walk today you’d gone back up again,” he said. 

Red let out a long, slow breath. “I’d tell you,” he said. “If I was going to leave.”

“Yeah, well.” Green flicked his gaze away, at the wall, the ceiling, anything else. The words _you didn’t tell me last time_ hung precariously between them. 

He wasn’t— _mad_ —about that, about Mount Silver or anything that happened before. He wasn’t bitter, or he liked to think he wasn’t bitter, anyways. No—now, ever since Red had first come back, Green was just…

Stuck.

It was strange—waking up every morning with a hollow feeling of uncertainty curling in his chest. Waiting for something, anything. An action on Red’s part, a word. Something to move them forward from this frozen place of _not knowing_. Not knowing if Red would be still be here every new day, not knowing if he would leave, not knowing when he would leave. Not knowing why he had come back. 

Not knowing if…

He couldn’t say it, didn’t know how. It had lived within him for as long as he could remember, before the League, before his journey, before everything. It was—the feeling of looking at Red, sometimes, seeing someone who he—who he sometimes loved, and sometimes hated, and always wanted to be beside. When Red had left the first time, nearly six years ago now, the feeling had come into sharp, unbearable relief. Now, with Red next to him again, it was…

Green exhaled, hard, pushing it away. Not the time for that, now. He said, “You can’t tell me that you never miss being up there. I saw you,” and again, the words felt almost accusatory, “I saw the way you were looking at the snow this morning.”

Another silence lulled. 

“I miss it sometimes,” was Red’s soft reply. “But this is where I want to be. Green.” There was rustling, and Green realized that Red was shifting, rolling out of bed, padding across the room. 

He knelt in front of Green, so they were eye level. Green was arrested by his closeness; he took in the fine lines of Red’s face, the curve of his cheek—less round than it used to be, now—the set of his mouth, those unbearable eyes. Absurdly, he thought of the snowflakes from earlier, how they might have caught in Red’s eyelashes, and then, even more absurdly, he thought of the river in his dream, rushing down from the mountain, carrying Red with it. 

“Green,” Red said, again. “I’ll stay right here.”

Green gazed back at him, at the quiet, steadfast sincerity in his face, and allowed himself this possibility. 

Questions still rustled in the periphery. Why had he come back? Why had he _left_? But no, that was not a conversation for now. They might have this conversation later—they _would_ have this conversation later—

But now there was only the quiet sweet thrumming relief of knowing that Red would stay, through the snow and after the thaw, the feeling like a murmuring, flashing river that ran through his heart—now there was only Red’s mouth tilting into that slight smile—now there was only Red’s hand, coming to settle on Green’s wrist. 

Red’s hand was not cold like he had thought it might be. Instead, it was very warm. 


End file.
